The greatest difference between left and right now is the inability of the left to admit that self interest drives all human behavior. They still believe in "The New Soviet Man." Adam Smith could have told them the truth in 1776. They still can't believe it, although I do wonder if they know better but are still telling the rubes what they want to hear.

Saint Milton's "Capitalism and Freedom" is a great read. And it was Milton Friedman who pointed out that a dollar spent by government has to be paid by a dollar from a private citizen in the form of taxation.

As for Donohue--I think his hair had insulated his brain. Of course it was the 1970s.

Donohue's role was to play the sensitive liberal. He was, IIRC, married to Margo Thomas. He was the liberal truth seeker in his TV show. He asked the tough questions, albeit with really bad hair. Or so we were led to believe.

Friedman's rejoiner eviscorated Phil's question, and Phil was left looking like a dork.

But I have to disagree with Scott M. No TV audience today would sit and listen (or sleep) through an extended reply like that without clapping, cheering, or booing at the perceived clap, boo, cheer lines. We no longer have that sort of respectful self-discipline, and absent this clip I would have forgotten that it had ever existed.

"hawkeyedjb said... If I want to take what others have earned and put it to my desired use, I am Not Greedy."

I wonder about this also. If you're talking to a liberal there are two people fighting over your wallet, them to get it and you to keep it. What logical gymnastics do they go through to conclude your defense is greed but their actions are not?

Pogo, you read too much into Donahue's question. I suspect you're correct, but shouldn't we take the Q&A at face value? Friedman controlled the discussion, and Donahue let him do it. I think Phil should get a few points for that.

Michael K said, "The greatest difference between left and right now is the inability of the left to admit that self interest drives all human behavior. They still believe in "The New Soviet Man."

Or perhaps the tragedy is that the many of those on the left would not know what you're talking about when you talk about "The New Soviet Man," or why that didn't work out so well.

Thomas Sowell is often gloomy because he understands that the arc of utopianism invariably bends toward repression when people fail to behave as the utopians wish, and ends in violence-as-shock when mere repression results not in compliance but in craftier evasions of authority.

Utopians either conveniently forget the dismal past of utopianisms, or they just insist that next time will be different.

"...Pogo, you read too much into Donahue's question. I suspect you're correct, but shouldn't we take the Q&A at face value?"

I no longer take anything at face value. Friedman smashed him, albeit very politely, and Donahue had no effective rejoinder.

I watched Donahue a lot when he was around, and he had an agenda. Friedman derailed his plans. Donahue had no idea that Friedman could answer the question, because Friedman answered the "wrong" question.

Donahue had no plans for Friedman's answer. I don't think he was being polite or allowing an extended answer. He wasn't shy about interrupting people.

Donahue was flummoxed, stupefied, speechless. You could see the wheels spinning, trying in vain to get back on track, blaming bad people for the Way the World Is.

I thought mine was a perfectly reasonable question and not some pathetic attempt at subject-changing.

I think very few people knowingly do something pathetic. This is why I pointed it out to you. People routinely use logical fallacies in their arguments and are surprised when someone points it out. And these same people routinely respond the way you have: denying that they've committed a logical fallacy.

The claim that can be seen any where is that liberals claim to be open minded ("liberals are open minded" results in over 10 million hits). dreams simply pointed out that this is true. Thinking you were defending liberals you asked are conservatives open minded. This isn't a defense. Imagine a murder saying "Other people have murdered people" as a defense in court. You'd laugh at him a rightly so.

You apparently assume that I'm a close-minded liberal. (Project much?)

But to answer your question.

As a political centrist (one of those detested moderates), I was pretty good at embracing the idea of more and more gun control laws whenever somebody somewhere commits an atrocity (e.g., Aurora, Colorado).

I don't know if those who mentioned him are talking of his books or of his columns and articles.

I don't usually read his columns. Some are pretty good but too many are just fair.

Where he really shines is in his books.

If you have not read his books, you are missing out on a lot. I suggest starting with "Ethnic America" in which he looks at each major ethnic group who came to America, why they came, how, what they did and experienced once here and where they are as of 1979 when the book was published.

Each group has a separate chapter and he looks at each group the same way. It is perhaps the best book ever on the subject.

Not as deep on any particular group as some more specific books. I liked it because it compared each group the same ways.

All of his other books on a wide variety of subjects are excellent as well.

I first heard of Sowell on Friedman's Free to Choose series. He was on a panel discussing the episode theme with Friedman. Also on the panel was Francis Fox-Pivens. First I'd heard of her, either. What a blowhard she was. Comic relief was her main purpose there, I think.

Ken, your discussion with MisterBuddwing reminds me of a conversation I recently had with my son. He brought up one of Zeno's paradoxes, which essentially proves logically that motion is impossible. I said that the problem was probably not in the logic, but in the locution, that the language and way the concept was portrayed laid bare the logical paradox.

For good reason. Imagine if person A said a bridge should be built over river R, but person B said that no bridge should be built. The equivalent of the "detested moderate" comes along and says "Let's compromise and build half the bridge".

You can see right away what away what a waste or resources such an idea is and just how stupid it is. This is what political "centrists" for constantly, when the call for compromise. Hideously grotesque and wasteful policies have been erected in the middle because it's difficult to see that what's being built is half a bridge.

For good reason. Imagine if person A said a bridge should be built over river R, but person B said that no bridge should be built. The equivalent of the "detested moderate" comes along and says "Let's compromise and build half the bridge".

Yes, I remember reading that feeble argument online. (Care to cite the source? I'm too lazy to look it up.)

And I remember thinking: No, the moderate would not advocate building half a bridge. The moderate would listen to the crazed environmentalist saying there must be no bridge at all, and Gov. Jerry Brown who says we absolutely must build a ten-lane state of the art bridge for 100 kazillion dollars, and say: How about a four-lane bridge that doesn't cost nearly as much?

A fool perhaps, but he let his guests answer the questions he put to them. Modern hosts like Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly would have shouted him down midway through his second sentence.

If you gave me one word to describe Donahue, I'd dither between douche and asshat. I confess to not having seen him on TV in years, maybe a decade or two.

But Rev is right. I was thinking 'How many times would Piers Morgan have butted in by now?' as I watched. At least Donahue was an entertainment show, if I recall. I don't recall him ever masquerading as some sort of journalistic entity. Now we get entertainment shows dressed up as sober reportage when all the interviewer is trying to do is inject him or herself into the mix.

"Not that I'm picking a fight or anything, but would you care to cite an example where your own open-mindedness led to you concede"

When I was young, like a lot of young people I considered myself a liberal.

I can remember watching debates on PBS TV and being convinced of an argument until I heard the opposing debater make his case and I guess that is when I really realized that there are two sides to every story or point of view.

I became more conservative after Reagan was elected and I saw the positive results of his Presidency. Also in 1981 I started investing in the stock market and became more aware of the benefits of the free market.

Ooohh, Zeno's Paradox. That took me years to resolve. Unfortunately, it is not in the locution. It is in the assumption that Achilles has to run through more points than the turtle, no matter what, so Achilles can never catch him.

The problem lies in the non-rigorous treatment of what is meant by "infinity" and the fact that there are different sized infinities. There are more real numbers than there are rational numbers, but there are just as many integers as there are rational numbers. It gets difficult to understand.

The reality is that on the real line, there are the same number of points in any interval. For example, the number of points in the open interval (0,1) is the SAME as that in (0,1000000000). Cantor formalized many of these ideas, along with Weierstrass and many other mathematicians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

I thought mine was a perfectly reasonable question and not some pathetic attempt at subject-changing.

As others pointed out "What does compromise mean?" I think it means European style socialism, and the massive decline it is facing now and for the foreseeable future.

What I like about Friedman (never heard him before), is that he uses the experiments from history to bolster his case. It doesn't seem to matter how bad the social experiments of leftists have worked out, they are here to stay, even be increased, apparently, until the money runs out.

Of all the programs, which ones worked out well? The GI Bill is one. But it seems the country is going down a completely different path these days. Instead of enriching its citizens, it is importing poverty, and massively subsidizing it. I simply can't see how it makes sense for the long term future of the US.

I wish someone could explain it to me (take a look at what is happening in CA, for instance, with its 11% unemployment rate, massive per citizen expenditures, etc).

Milton Friedman has emphasized elsewhere the importance of free enterprisers playing by the rules. And he has quoted Adam Smith to the effect that without government free markets wouldn't last five minutes.

I wonder how Romney's plan that raises taxes on 95% of the population squares with Friedmanomics?

Since Friedman believed in a broad tax base, instead of taxing only half of the population, lowering the tax rates and broadening the base fits right in there with Friedmanomics. But I'm not really surprised you don't know this. Have you ever read or studied Friedman or just read summaries on your favorite lefty websites?

Milton Friedman has emphasized elsewhere the importance of free enterprisers playing by the rules. And he has quoted Adam Smith to the effect that without government free markets wouldn't last five minutes.

Um, who exactly are the people you think DON'T support the existence of government? And who are the people who think "free enterprisers" should lie, cheat and steal?

This is a lousy attitude. Moderates may be wrong, more often they are lying to themselves "or us" that they are in fact moderates. But to detest the position rather then the use of it as a subterfuge is to push ones allies to your opponents.

There's almost no set of positions that someone doesn't consider moderate or squishy. Embrace moderates.

Zeno's paradox is as follows: Achilles can never catch a turtle that is given a head start by the following logic:

1. Achilles starts at point 0, and the turtle starts at point d_02. The race starts, when Achilles reaches d_0, the turtle is at d_1, which is in front of d_0. This continues ad infinitum, meaning that whenever Achilles gets to d_k, the turtle is at t_{k+1}.3. This means Achilles has to run through infinitely more points than the turtle to catch the turtle, Achilles can never catch the turtle.

The problem is resolved by understanding that the first point in the last statement (that Achilles has to run through infinitely more points than the turtle) is wrong, the conclusion is wrong. If I move 1 foot and you move three feet, both of us have moved through the exact same number of points.

As I said, weird things happen when talking about infinity.

I haven't studied quantum mechanics, but if I understand what you're saying, then the number of points that the turtle and Achilles has to run through are finite, since you cannot divide space into arbitrarily small units. This also resolves Zeno's paradox because the idea that Achilles can move through more points in a given time than the turtle is not controversial.

My point was that your compromise is actually worse than simply giving the bridge-builders the bridge they asked for. In the latter case the bridge-builders would be happier and the environmentalists would be no worse off.

This is the problem with the naive belief that compromise is always possible. There are many disputes for which compromise is logically impossible; the bridge-building scenario is one such.

I wonder how Romney's plan that raises taxes on 95% of the population squares with Friedmanomics? At this point, aren't you just voting for his hair?

As a previous poster mentioned, Friedman would definitely endorse "raising" taxes on the 50% of the population that doesn't pay taxes, and reducing transfer payments to the 40% who get a "refund" instead.

"As a previous poster mentioned, Friedman would definitely endorse "raising" taxes on the 50% of the population that doesn't pay taxes, and reducing transfer payments to the 40% who get a "refund" instead."

Yes.

And ending the Democrat vote-buying transfer payment scheme cannibalizing America's future is the single biggest threat to Democrat hegemony.

Ken, thanks for the explanation. I may retain this for even longer than five minutes! Don't count on it.

The quantum explanation, as you suggest, is simple: the number of points is simply finite. Zeno didn't know that.

I must say, though, that I still think there's a language problem. I'm expert at English, lousy in a few other languages, and completely inert in most. But these languages differ a lot. Some have articles; some capitalize nouns; some have strict word order. The ways in which we express ourselves probably govern the ways in which we think.

Ah, well, as I said before, big minds have undoubtedly already written books about such things.

But I think the political impact of factors like this is misunderestimated, especially and embarassingly by the professional people who write for a living.

Bob Ellison wrote:I said that was irrelevant, because Zeno knew it was wrong when he posed the paradox.

Zeno had a whole budget of paradoxes like the tortoise vs. Achilles race, but I don't believe he was trying to prove that motion or change is impossible, for clearly they are not (even if one posits change as an illusion, one much also admit that the mind that concocts the illusion must change).

What Zeno was offering was a critique of Aristotelian logic, which some callow minds will take for a road to truth. Thus via his paradoxes Zeno shows us that though it may be correct that a true proposition is logical, there are many more untrue proposition which are also logical.

Friedman avoided answering Donahue's question and most of you are assuming Donahue was arguing by implication for an abandonment of capitalism.

Of course, greed is the driving force in most, if not all, human endeavor. It is the elaboration of our animal instincts to acquire and store food against times of want, and to build or find shelter against the elements and predators. But societies do not function who allow their citizens license to act on their natural impulses unimpeded. Rational societies enact laws to check individuals--and organizations of individuals--from behavior that will harm society at large and the individuals that comprise it, while encouraging productive behavior that will benefit both the individual and society.

So, the question is not (necessarily) whether, because greed allowed free run leads to bad results for many people, we should abandon capitalism in favor of other economic systems, but, instead, what can we do to achieve a capitalism that is productive yet hindered from causing or allowing harm to the many for the benefit of the few?

Of course, there are those who argue against capitalism in favor of other economic arrangements, but not all who question or critique the deleterious effects of capitalism necessarily call for or argue the only solution is for the abolition of capitalism. Friedman, at least in this edited clip, does not offer an impregnable defense of capitalism so much as he merely avoids addressing its downside.

For good reason. Imagine if person A said a bridge should be built over river R, but person B said that no bridge should be built. The equivalent of the "detested moderate" comes along and says "Let's compromise and build half the bridge".

You can see right away what away what a waste or resources such an idea is and just how stupid it is. This is what political "centrists" for constantly, when the call for compromise. Hideously grotesque and wasteful policies have been erected in the middle because it's difficult to see that what's being built is half a bridge.----

How appropriate your avatar is. Some rightists are more equal than others. Blowhard.

" to check individuals--and organizations of individuals--from behavior that will harm society at large and the individuals that comprise it, while encouraging productive behavior that will benefit both the individual and society. "

It's the assumption of the second part which is laid waste by the historical reality. That is the issue.

As Friedman asked: "Where are these angels?"

Are they in congress?

People generally fail at using other peoples' money to do good to any degree even close to those who use their own. That's another point Friedman made. The best system ever devised. Hell, he covered everything without a wasted word.

Sets are said to be of the same cardinality if there is a bijection (one to one and onto) between them. In other words, X and Y have the same cardinality if there is a f : X -> Y, such that for all y in Y, there is a x in X, such that f(x) = y and if f(a) = f(b), then a = b.

For finite sets this is easy to show. If two sets have four elements, label one set (a_1, a_2, a_3, a_4) and the other (b_1, b_2, b_3, b_4), then define the function f(a_x) = b_x, where x = 1,2,3,4.

For infinite sets, you do the same thing.

That there are the same number of points in (0,1) and (0,infinity) can be seen using the function f(x) = 1/x. It is one to one and onto.

Or, are all infinities equal?

No. There are more real numbers than rationals (though there are the same number of integers as there are rationals). See countable and uncountable sets.

I'm surprised Friedman let Donahue get away with the implicit assumption in the question:"As you look around the world at millions of people groaning in poverty [, all of whom live in societies that are models of free market capitalism, and not at all beset by cronyism or statism or anything like that], does it make you doubt that free market capitalism is a good idea?"

I have no background in math, but I know that a non-zero number can be divided into an infinite number of points. Once you reach infinity, you just keep going. On that basis, I would say that "all infinities are equal."

Friedman did answer Donahue and your questions. You simply fail to or choose not to understand. You're simply assuming that the people put in charge are not acting out of greed. Simply put, capitalism and free markets pits the greed of consumers against the greed of other consumers and the greed of producers against the greed of other producers. There is a natural dampening of greed because markets are dynamic and everyone responds to everyone else's actions.

You, and Donahue, simply assume that regulators can and will act in the interest of the greater good. But you don't explain what "the greater good" is, nor do you answer how politicians and bureaucrats are not greedy. Friedman simply showed you this simple and thoughtless way you, and Donahue, think about society and you can't handle it.

The reality is that ALL social systems are based on greed. The question should be, which system best utilizes greed in good ways. The answer is unequivocally free market capitalism.

Rational societies enact laws to check individuals--and organizations of individuals--from behavior that will harm society at large and the individuals that comprise it, while encouraging productive behavior that will benefit both the individual and society.

Robert Cook, I think the mistake you make is assuming that societies can act "rationally." First, you're not likely to get widespread agreement on what "rationally" means, and even if that was possible, you aren't likely to see that enacted in law. It's nice to believe that we can use government to regulate evil out of the world, but the law of unintended consequences will prevail every time. Even if that were not the case, every time you increase government power by regulation, you give more incentive to companies to obtain favorable treatment under those regulations.

Remember, Friedman holds that policies favoring corporations aren't any better than those favoring trade unions, or other political interests. Remove government's ability to treat particular groups favorably, and you remove those groups ability and incentive to game the system. Some of course, would try to accomplish the same thing by restricting free speech.

"So, the question is not (necessarily) whether, because greed allowed free run leads to bad results for many people, we should abandon capitalism in favor of other economic systems, but, instead, what can we do to achieve a capitalism that is productive yet hindered from causing or allowing harm to the many for the benefit of the few?"___________________________

Note the casual inclusion of "allowing" harm. It's an admission even Cookie knows the class warfare he supports uses wounds not caused by capitalism as its casus belli. It's also a weasel word which justifies anything.

Societal success is a long process. Consider freedom. Obviously not everyone reached the same level of freedom at the same time. This doesn't mean the individual steps toward freedom were meaningless. Each step makes the next morre possible and likely. The important point is that virtually everyone is better off now than they were even 75 years ago. Should we stop increasing freedom everywhere in order to increase freedom equality? Of should we see the success of our efforts and try to push more freedom everywhere?

Cookie's biggest problem is the ability to reach a conclusion. "It's working, we must stop" is not the right answer.

Revenant said... Good point. I suppose in a true compromise, nobody is happy

My point was that your compromise is actually worse than simply giving the bridge-builders the bridge they asked for. In the latter case the bridge-builders would be happier and the environmentalists would be no worse off.

This is the problem with the naive belief that compromise is always possible. There are many disputes for which compromise is logically impossible; the bridge-building scenario is one such.----

Except that the evironmentalists at least benefit from the lesser ecological impact of four lanes as oppposed to ten.

A heartfelt request: acquire an avatar of Charlie Brown in his ghost costume so you're easier to spot :)

"Not that I'm picking a fight or anything, but would you care to cite an example where your own open-mindedness led to you concede, "Yes, I was totally wrong about that, and I see the light now"?"

Speaking for myself, I've changed my mind about the war on drugs and and same-sex marriage.

I grew up a Reagan-era drug prohibitionist, but the inevitable abuses enabled by that policy have caused great harm. And for very little benefit. I now generally favor decriminalization or legalization.

I'd previously maintained that civil unions were the correct way to provide same-sex couples with equal legal and social standing. I've since become convinced that allowing same-sex marriage would be a better solution for everyone.

Luke Lea said...Milton Friedman has emphasized elsewhere the importance of free enterprisers playing by the rules. And he has quoted Adam Smith to the effect that without government free markets wouldn't last five minutes.

Duh. You seem to think that's a triumphant point, Luke, somehow justifying the megalith state of today. Friedman's point was that the purpose of government is to protect the liberty of the individual.

Not an original idea with MF--

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it"

"...what can we do to achieve a capitalism that is productive yet hindered from causing or allowing harm to the many for the benefit of the few?"

Stop making it so hard for the many to participate. When it takes two months of bureaucratic silliness, if you really work at it, to legally open a lemonade stand, then imagine how hard it is to start and maintain a business that hires people, grows and actually creates things. It is primarily government that makes "fat cat" capitalists fat. Government protects them from the competition of the many, and thus concentrates the wealth by creating a high barrier to entry into their game where they would be forced to compete and have to drop a little weight. Every law that government passes to restrict free enterprise ends up only restricting to the already powerful and away from the many.

The blueprint I would suggest to improve capitalism has been around for a while: The U.S. Constitution in it's original intent without trying to change it to fix every little inequality of life. We all not all going to live rich and die old. Get over it.

There are no angels among men. There are only competing power blocs. In a representative republic, the citizenry is one power bloc, (made up of many smaller power blocs). We, the people, presumably are the watchdogs of those we choose to represent our interest. Laws are passed by our representatives to serve our needs and protect our interests, ideally. These laws act to check predation by bad actors, and we, the people, are responsible to see that our representatives and the laws they pass in our name serve us. When they do not, it is up to us to remove them them the positions of responsibility to which we have appointed them.

Where the people are complacent, apathetic, ignorant, inattentive, or bamboozled, tyranny will take root and grow.

Laws are passed by our representatives to serve our needs and protect our interests, ideally. These laws act to check predation by bad actors, and we, the people, are responsible to see that our representatives and the laws they pass in our name serve us.

This is mostly assumption for almost all national laws that are passed these days.

When they do not, it is up to us to remove them them the positions of responsibility to which we have appointed them.

Of course, there are those who don't take such responsibility seriously. After all, how serious does anyone who thinks ceding responsibility for ones financial life believes anything financial is their responsibility. Additionally, the predators in government simply ignore what voters want (Obamacare) and write laws to prevent election competition. The democrats and republicans have written byzantine regulations surrounding entering an election so that only establishment democrats and republicans can legally enter elections.

But, mostly, only a small percent really cares about politics. Most just want to be left alone and get on with their lives. It's outrageous that you would elect predatory representatives to prey on people who just want to be left alone, then call them ignorant or apathetic. You and your kind have decided to create Leviathan, then act as if it's everyone else's fault for letting it happen.

Friedman whose plans never actually worked. He was a purist with utopia in mind. His school of thought is one Obama followed while at the Chicago School. Many Republicans love Friedman but they don't think his ideas through.

Not that I'm picking a fight or anything, but would you care to cite an example where your own open-mindedness led to you concede, "Yes, I was totally wrong about that, and I see the light now"?

Oh, for starters...

<1>Gambling is an excellent way to fund public education.<2>The economy is like a pizza -- if you win all I get is the delivery box.<3>Mr. Obama's our president, he won fair-and-square, let's give his ideas time to play out.

[Friedman's] school of thought is one Obama followed while at the Chicago School.

Would you like to explain this one? Obama went to school at Columbia, then Harvard. After this, he was a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. At what point would he have picked up on the Chicago school of economics?

My point is that I'm surprised Friedman let Donahue get away with the implicit assumption that the world's poor live in societies that are models of free market capitalism, and not at all beset by cronyism or statism or anything like that, such that their poverty could be held against free market capitalism.

I have no background in math, but I know that a non-zero number can be divided into an infinite number of points. Once you reach infinity, you just keep going. On that basis, I would say that "all infinities are equal."

No. See Cantor's "diagonal" proof. How do you show that two sets have the same number of members? You pair up one member of one set with one member of the other one, and see if there are any left over on either side. Works with infinite sets as well as finite ones. Try that with integers and multiples of three, or integers and rational numbers, and you'll find you can do a one-to-one correspondence easily.

Cantor's proof involving integers vs. real numbers goes like this. Any real number between 0 and 1 can be represented as an infinitely long decimal. Some decimals terminate (i.e., after a certain number of digits every following digit is 0); some repeat; some don't do either.

So suppose you've come up with a way of listing all the possible decimals in correspondence with the positive integers, so that 1 corresponds to one number, 2 to a different one, and so forth. Cantor says: OK, so construct a decimal where the first digit is one less than the first digit of No. 1, the second digit one less than the second digit of No. 2, and so forth (using 9 for "one less than zero").

Is this number on the list? Suppose you say "sure it is; it's N on the list." Cantor says "But, no it isn't; the Nth digit is different."

Now that's a good line, Tim in VT. Kind of sad/funny as well because it's true.

If Europe continues to tank, and China continues to cool, and the world economic funkification continues, then the next meme that will catch fire with the left is debt forgiveness. They are going to demand that rich countries just eat the IOUs of their debtors. So they're not worried about financial sustainability. Be prepared to hear about all of the historical precedents when it comes to debt forgiveness, but you'll be hard-pressed to find one as a result of 'peaceful' compromise. Usually nations victorious in war forgive the debts of the conquered, such as the US did for Germany and Japan as a result of WWII. (There wasn't much alternative; the countries had been reduced to rubble and weren't going to make payments anytime soon.)

My point is that I'm surprised Friedman let Donahue get away with the implicit assumption that the world's poor live in societies that are models of free market capitalism, and not at all beset by cronyism or statism or anything like that, such that their poverty could be held against free market capitalism.

He may have thought you were being sarcastic, because you appear to have missed this from the video:

"In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system."

Except that the evironmentalists at least benefit from the lesser ecological impact of four lanes as oppposed to ten.

You make two unsupported assumptions here. The first is that a four-lane bridge would have less impact. The second is that partial destruction of the environment constitutes a "benefit" from the point of view of the environmentalists.

You have to be open minded to change your mind. Liberals are very close minded people. -- dreams @ 10:29 AM

Not that I'm picking a fight or anything, but would you care to cite an example where your own open-mindedness led to you concede, "Yes, I was totally wrong about that, and I see the light now"? -- MisterBuddwing @ 10:58 AM

Before 9-11 I was a Chomskyite progressive. Then I saw how my liberal friends reflexively blamed America, defended Islam at all costs, and were entirely unwilling to consider the violence, intolerance, and supremacy built into Islam since Muhammad. From there I discovered that there was no reasoning with my liberal friends on these issues. Often there was not even a place to agree to disagree.

From there I gradually became conservative. Now that I know both sides, I find conservatives make the better arguments.

I don't think I'm that unusual. Open-minded liberals, from what I've seen among my friends, tend to become conservative over time. I don't see people going in the other direction much.

When Phil Donahue signs his contract for the TV show, how many times do you think that he has said to the network executives: "Oh, come on, I don't need that much money. I'll do the show for a quarter of what you've offered. I'm not greedy."

We do not, have never, will never, and can never live in an ideal world. We live, instead, in a world in which nobody has perfect knowledge and nobody is entirely selfless. Any political or economic belief system which depends on ideal behavior will fail.

"Open-minded liberals, from what I've seen among my friends, tend to become conservative over time. I don't see people going in the other direction much."

I did.

I was raised in a Republican family--they're all still Republicans--and I registered as Republican when I turned 18. I voted for Ford against Carter in the first Presidential election I could vote in, and for Reagan against Carter in the next one.

As I left the protective family environment and began to see what the world was really like, I began to shift my perspective leftward.

I changed my registration to Democrat when I was 25, and am now to the point where I view the Dems as being little more than accomplices to the Republicans. Certainly, they're all equally in thrall to the financial elites who own this country. As someone said recently, America is a land with two right wing political parties.

By "no background in math," I meant "unable to understand even clearly written descriptions of Cantor's proof such as you have provided."

Because I think it's fun and interesting, I will take a shot at explaining what I meant. Keep in mind, my understanding is not much greater than my 10 year old's.

I understand this part: Any real number between 0 and 1 can be represented as an infinitely long decimal. Some decimals terminate (i.e., after a certain number of digits every following digit is 0); some repeat; some don't do either.

If I understand the next part correctly, Cantor says that the smaller set (the infinite numbers between zero and one) will lack some of the numbers between (e.g.) 5 and 9. I would obviously agree that in the smaller set you would not have any number greater than 1, so the smaller set would lack those numbers.

My point is that Cantor can come up with any number of numbers in his set, and I can come up with the same number of numbers from the smaller set. In both sets, you can continue making the set larger and larger, forever. Is his set Infinity times 5? To my admittedly uneducated mind, that is sort of like asking "what is the last number before you get to infinity?"

Anyone who believes this is capable of any kind of mental gymnastics, so I'm not surprised you were able to go from right to left.

No matter how you measure it, the state is bigger, more powerful and redistributive than ever. The rich are richer, but actually less politically powerful than they were in the past, because there are more of them and they compete for political power, which kind of cancels out any one faction's, leaving only the government to grow stronger.

(1) Tolerance for those different from oneself.(2) Willingness to consider the various sides of a debate and change one's mind in the face of better arguments.

Many liberals are open-minded in the sense of (1) but not (2). Of course, this is true of people in general, including some conservatives.

My impression is that before the New Left took off, liberals were more open-minded in both ways but that was lost when liberals came to emphasize their moral stances for civil rights and against the Vietnam War over reasoned positions -- much as you see Donahue in the Friedman clip.

Revenant said... Except that the evironmentalists at least benefit from the lesser ecological impact of four lanes as oppposed to ten.

You make two unsupported assumptions here. The first is that a four-lane bridge would have less impact. The second is that partial destruction of the environment constitutes a "benefit" from the point of view of the environmentalists.-----

A four-lane bridge would require less energy, release less pollutants, and have a smaller physical footprint than a ten-lane bridge.

A lesser amount of ecological damage constitutes being 'better off' for the environmentalists.

My point was that your compromise is actually worse than simply giving the bridge-builders the bridge they asked for. In the latter case the bridge-builders would be happier and the environmentalists would be no worse off.

Matt said... Friedman whose plans never actually worked. He was a purist with utopia in mind. His school of thought is one Obama followed while at the Chicago School. Many Republicans love Friedman but they don't think his ideas through

See ChileEastoniaPolandetc etc

His ideas are just an attempt to describe what people do naturally when they come together to trade their resources. Free markets are still the most vibrant expression of that behavior. Free markets are organic.

A four-lane bridge would require less energy, release less pollutants, and have a smaller physical footprint than a ten-lane bridge.

I think a lot of this is mere assumption. If a 10 lane bridge is what was actually needed, people will turn to other modes of transportation to get across whatever it is that needs getting across. In other words, not building a 10 lane bridge shifts the burden of travel elsewhere, which could very easily have higher environmental impact.

Additionally, free markets are far better at finding solutions to environmental problems. This is why the carbon footprint of Americans has declined so much and Europeans hasn't, despite political signons, in Europe, to political solutions to environmental problems.

So, the question is not (necessarily) whether, because greed allowed free run leads to bad results for many people, we should abandon capitalism in favor of other economic systems, but, instead, what can we do to achieve a capitalism that is productive yet hindered from causing or allowing harm to the many for the benefit of the few?

Do you really want the answer to this? Because there is one, but it is currently unpopular, and largely ineffective.

The answer is to create and nuture a culture/society in which public morality and public opinion matter. When a man's word is as good as a lawyer written contract. When shame and embarassment exist.You cannot force someone to behave in an ethical and moral manner. You have to create an environment in which they want to behave that way.

"(1) Tolerance for those different from oneself.(2) Willingness to consider the various sides of a debate and change one's mind in the face of better arguments.

Many liberals are open-minded in the sense of (1) but not (2). Of course, this is true of people in general, including some conservatives."

Really?

As for (1), you don't know many Liberals whose palpable disdain for Conservatives in social or business settings is the latter day version of the anti-Semitic country clubs of the last century and before.

Tolerance for those different from oneself, my White, Conservative, Irish-Catholic ass, lol.

Tim: I know whereof you speak. Only too well. I've been forced out of several liberal communities which had once been home. A few friendships too.

There is a weird inversion at work. Since liberals place so much value on tolerance, they can't tolerate people whom they perceive as intolerant. (Which is not to say that conservatives are intolerant.)

It's like that old joke. "If there's one thing I can't stand, it's intolerance."

A four-lane bridge would require less energy, release less pollutants, and have a smaller physical footprint than a ten-lane bridge.

I think a lot of this is mere assumption. If a 10 lane bridge is what was actually needed, people will turn to other modes of transportation to get across whatever it is that needs getting across. In other words, not building a 10 lane bridge shifts the burden of travel elsewhere, which could very easily have higher environmental impact.

Additionally, free markets are far better at finding solutions to environmental problems. This is why the carbon footprint of Americans has declined so much and Europeans hasn't, despite political signons, in Europe, to political solutions to environmental problems.----

The subject at hand is hypothetical, and I don't disagree with the above. To determine whether a ten-lane bridge is necessary, and not just a boondoggle, a great discussion must be had. Suggesting that the moderate stance would be to build half a bridge is unconstructive.

Revenant, "ideally" is not a "problematic" word, it is the recognition that our systems never realize in practice what they're designed to achieve in theory.

But that's not true at all. Plenty of systems realize in practice what they are designed to achieve in theory; free market capitalism is an obvious example. It is the systems which *rely* on idealized behavior that are doomed to fail. The only things capitalism relies on are scarcity and need.

Given this reality, we must still work to the best of our ability in the systems we design for ourselves, always striving to correct errors and improve procedures.

What is the alternative?

Realism. Top-down imposition of "what is best for society" is impossible. It leads, in all cases, to elites accumulating more power and rigging the system to benefit themselves.

This is why value-neutral rules are what is best. Your approach of attempting to rig the system to preemptively choose winners isn't stable.

A four-lane bridge would require less energy, release less pollutants, and have a smaller physical footprint than a ten-lane bridge.

Not necessarily. If, for example, the bridge is in a high-traffic area, creating a small bridge can cause a bottleneck -- voila, instant traffic jam. Instant massive increase in pollution and CO2 output (not to mention fuel usage) as cars sit idling while waiting for their chance to cross.

Plus, of course, you're making the unsupported assumption that those are the issues environmentalists were concerned about. If the problem is, for example, that car traffic through the area will disrupt the local habitat for an endangered species then the fact that the bridge is "green" is no comfort at all. "Side X wins less than it could have and Side Y loses less than it could have" is not "compromise". It is "Side X winning and Side Y losing". The fact that a loss could have been worse doesn't make it anything other than a loss.

"Donahue did a great job. He asked open questions, and calmly let the subject answer them."

Exactly. Never mind Friedman, whose ideas are still great; where are our Donahue's today? See the kind of rubbish that passes for "debating the issues" on talk TV nowadays? Host asks questions then interrupts and browbeats the guest in such a way that the guest can't finish a sentence most of the time, much less make his/her point.

Who'd have thought that Phil Donahue would represent the apex of his genre? Jeez Louise...

p.s. I may be late to the party in noticing this but why and since when is Palladian's "panopticon icon" pic on fire?

"Side X wins less than it could have and Side Y loses less than it could have" is not "compromise". It is "Side X winning and Side Y losing". The fact that a loss could have been worse doesn't make it anything other than a loss.

As I said above, this is a hypothetical. Even if side X ends up with four lanes and side Y gets roosting perches every ten feet along the bridge rail, both sides have given something up and have compromised, which is the basis of the two-party system.

As I said above, this is a hypothetical. Even if side X ends up with four lanes and side Y gets roosting perches every ten feet along the bridge rail, both sides have given something up and have compromised, which is the basis of the two-party system.

Um, no. It isn't. The basis of a two-party system is that the party in the majority gets to do things its way. Compromise is the basis of systems where no one faction can constitute a majority (e.g. many parliamentary systems). Also, while your ability to imagine scenarios in which compromise is possible is cute and all, you're continuing to miss the point -- it is not a *given* that compromise is possible.

Some obvious historical examples that I am confident not even you can miss are:

- Whether it should be legal to own people as property- Whether women should have the same voting rights as men- Whether non-whites should have the same civil rights as whites - Whether it should be legal for healthy women to abort healthy fetuses

And so on. People who think compromise is always possible aren't very bright; there are plenty of issues in real life that are either/or. Almost ALL the important issues fall into this category.

This clip reminds me of how smart Milton was and what a dumb-ass Donahue was. I'll always be grateful to Oprah and Sally Jesse Raphael for driving that Irish drama queen into cable TV obscurity and retirement.

As for (1), you don't know many Liberals whose palpable disdain for Conservatives in social or business settings is the latter day version of the anti-Semitic country clubs of the last century and before.

It's a remote, distant tolerance for a lot of them that they talk about endlessly but rarely embrace on an intimate level. It's a NIMBY kind of tolerance.

Revenant said... As I said above, this is a hypothetical. Even if side X ends up with four lanes and side Y gets roosting perches every ten feet along the bridge rail, both sides have given something up and have compromised, which is the basis of the two-party system.

Um, no. It isn't. The basis of a two-party system is that the party in the majority gets to do things its way. Compromise is the basis of systems where no one faction can constitute a majority (e.g. many parliamentary systems). Also, while your ability to imagine scenarios in which compromise is possible is cute and all, you're continuing to miss the point -- it is not a *given* that compromise is possible.

Some obvious historical examples that I am confident not even you can miss are:

- Whether it should be legal to own people as property- Whether women should have the same voting rights as men- Whether non-whites should have the same civil rights as whites - Whether it should be legal for healthy women to abort healthy fetuses

And so on. People who think compromise is always possible aren't very bright; there are plenty of issues in real life that are either/or. Almost ALL the important issues fall into this category.----

I never said that all issues can be decided by compromise, but two of the four you listed above once were, and abortion of healthy fetuses still is. Most other non hot-button issues, given the nature of slim majorities and back-room bargaining, are decided compromise.

I never said that all issues can be decided by compromise, but two of the four you listed above once were, and abortion of healthy fetuses still is.

None of the four issues were decided by compromise, then or now.

Take the issue of equal rights for non-whites. Now, you -- like many before you -- may say "well, non-whites were given SOME rights, but not as many as whites, so that's a compromise."

Except it wasn't, because the "compromisers" agreed with the proposition that non-whites should not have the same rights as whites. One side said "they should be treated equally", the other said "no they shouldn't", and the so-called compromise was... "no they shouldn't". Calling that "compromise" is like describing a rape as "compromise" because the rapist could have killed the victim but opted to leave her alive.

You cannot compromise between X and Not X. Either something can or cannot be done; either two things are or are not equal.

I remember seeing this and now that I see it again, I can see Donahue, the devout communist, staring at Friedman as he articulates, cogently, the wonders of capitalism and greed, thinking to himself "Fuck, you didn't build that. Someone else did."

First, when it comes to bridges and greed, keep in mind the saga of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He started penniless in Searchlight, NV, and now he, and his five kids, are all fairly wealthy (they from sweetheart deals and lobbying - all 4 boys and the son-in-law are attorneys in NV, and 4 of 5 get at least some lobbying work). But back to bridges. The story is that a new bridge was being considered across the Colorado from Laughlin, NV to Bullhead City, AZ. Surprisingly, the Reid family owned land right where the bridge was built using federal money. From the story, it was never clear whether the bridge was sited where the Reids had land, they had the land because of inside information about the bridge siting, or, the most popular story, that the bridge was built because of his pushing for it. In any case, each scenario ends up pointing out the reality that the Reid family benefited financially from the building of a bridge that Harry Reid pushed.

Was there greed involved? Of course. The problem is that it was public money being spent, not Reid family money.

Lest anyone think that this is a fluke, let me assure you that it is not. Very often, the siting of infrastructure, who owns the land, who gets the work, etc., is almost purely political, and results in some favored people making money as a result.

Probably a more egregious example was the new Denver International Airport. The old Stapleton Airport was fairly close-in, but also had 4 runways, and that airport had an almost identical ranking in air traffic as DIA does today - around 5th or so worldwide. Plenty of cities with comparable populations have fewer runways than that. But, Denver wanted another runway (why?)

Somehow, a $5 or so billion airport was authorized, and came in maybe a billion over budget. Half of that might have been slippage and awarding contracts to Black companies (Wellington Webb was mayor at the time it was built) when White firms could do the work better and more cheaply. And the land costs doubled - with a half a billion more than expected.

Turns out that much of the land for the new airport had been recently purchased by a who's who of Denver monied families, and the result was that the same politically connected families were the ones benefiting from the run up in land prices, as the city was pushed to the preferred location, and, not really the farmers who had owned the land up until a year or so before.

Don't get me wrong - I love the airport, but Stapleton was just fine and a lot more convenient. Still DIA is one of the best airports in the world.

Second thing is that, yes, Friedman pushed for a broader tax base BUT, another thing that he pushed for, somewhat, was what he termed the negative income tax. If you start with the premise that we need a safety net, then the optimal way to provide it was to start with, a credit for everyone, regardless of income (but maybe not the same for every person - the incremental cost of adding someone to a household drops as the size of the household increases), and then a flat income tax, without exemptions and the like.

The idea was to have a straight line of incentives to work. Say, the tax rate was 20%, with no income cut-offs, rate step ups, or exemptions. That means that if you work 1 hour at $10 an hour, you get to keep 80% of it, and ditto for 3,000 hours.

Instead, we have taken almost the opposite approach, making it uneconomic for many at the lower income levels to go to work, at least at the marginal levels. There are a lot of people in this country who essentially earn minimum wage from the benefits they get from government. There are places where the benefit cutoffs and tax increases are large enough that they face a 50% or higher effective tax increase/benefit cut rate to get over the hurdles into the next relatively flat spot on the curve. As someone pointed out a couple of days ago, why work for $9 an hour, when you can get $7 an hour for not working, and not-working is worth more than $2 an hour for many, if not most, people?